This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

"The level of drawing in these erotic fantasies is extremely high, sometimes rivaling the work of the iconic Western porno artist Tom of Finland...The content of the stories in Massive is completely unlike the feathery romanticism of yaoi manga and anime. Rough, even sadistic sex takes the place of wistful longing." -Charles Solomon, IndieWire

"The Late Child is a rich and intelligent work, one of the lushest and most giving graphic novels in recent memory." -Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin

"Marguerite's partner on these books as well as in life, Romberger, leaves his ink drawings open enough for her watercolors to capture various types of natural light during the day…It is a significantly gentler and more pastoral book, traditionally beautiful. Calling 7 Miles a Second "beautiful" would lead to smirking inwardly while waiting to be challenged; the book carries ugliness inside itself as part of its very being. While that book's language pushed forward with velocity and free association, this one places each considered thought into a caption to ring out poetically."–Brian Nicholson, Bookslut

"While the early issues stand as rowdy documents of the 1960s counterculture, Zap was also more. In reinventing the comic book, it set off legal battles and conversations over censorship, brought attention to cartoonists as artists, and set an example for generations of alternative comics creators like Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt and the Hernandez Brothers." –Dana Jennings, The NY Times

"The Zapatistas were a sort of 'supergroup'-the dharma warriors of comics. Inkslingers. Revolutionaries. The best of the best. Their only yardsticks for comparison were each other and that sort of fraternal competition raised the bar and kept their art constantly evolving and their social satire razor sharp." –Richard Metzger, Dangerous Minds

"Max's latest graphic novel translated by Fantagraphics purifies and condenses his cartooning and thinking. Vapor charts the struggles and strange encounters of Nicodemos, a long-haired, long-nosed monk, who has quit the ‘gigantic muddle' of the world to seek transcendence in a desert through self-deprivations." –Paul Gravett

"The Nancy books are beautiful, and that work is such that it will be pulled from shelves and re-examined years after other collections, ostensibly more exciting this very minute, have worked their way to the sales box." –Tom Spurgeon, Comics Reporter

"Have you ever taken the time to read and devour Ernie Bushmiller's masterpiece Nancy. Deceptibly simple and oddly corny, it is surprisingly funny and a virtual textbook on comic storytelling." –Andy Mansell, Heroes Online

"Carré's work, fittingly titled Heads or Tails, probes choice, ambivalence and fate; in her stories, there's a flip side to everything, rendered in full and brilliant colour." -Laura Kane, The Toronto Star

From the time it first appeared in 1968 - peddled from a baby carriage on the streets of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district - R. Crumb's perversely perceptive observations in Zap altered the course of American counterculture. The Zap Comix collective came to include eight creative misfits, as Crumb was joined by Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, and Paul Mavrides. Over the course of three and-a-half decades they produced 16 issues on an intermittent schedule. The Complete Zap Comix Anthology will include all prior issues plus the previously unpublished #17 and a fascinating oral history of Zap by underground comix scholar Patrick Rosenkranz. A special, limited edition of the anthology will include a portfolio of signed prints from the pages of Zap. The exhibition at Fantagraphics Bookstore will feature prints, posters, drawings and related ephemera from these master cartoonists.

Robert Williams emerged on the American art scene in 1965 as a designer for notorious hot rod celebrity Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. In addition to his later work on Zap and other underground comix, Williams has enjoyed a successful career as a fine artist. His work was featured in MoCA's landmark "Helter Skelter" exhibition in 1992 and the travelling "Kustom Kulture" show, which appeared at Seattle's Center on Contemporary Art in 1994. His paintings have since been exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide. Fantagraphics Books has published three volumes of Williams work including Malicious Resplendence, Hysteria in Remission, and Conceptual Realism. Williams will sign copies of these and other books at the reception on December 13 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, which marks the 8th anniversary of Fantagraphics Bookstore. This event also coincides with the colorful holiday edition of the Georgetown Art Attack.

On Sunday, December 14 at 4:00 PM, Fantagraphics Books co-hosts the Seattle premiere of Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin' at Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Avenue on Capitol Hill. This wildly entertaining documentary, directed by Mary Reese and Nancye Ferguson, chronicles the career of this incredibly influential artist. Williams will introduce the movie and answer questions following the screening.

On Thursday, December 18, at 7:00 PM, editor J. Michael Catron will give a slide presentation on the history of Zap Comix and its lasting cultural implications. The festivities will conclude on Saturday, December 20 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM with a Tribute to S. Clay Wilson featuring Patrick Rosenkranz, Dennis Dread and Jim Blanchard. Rosenkranz will sign copies of The Mythology of S. Clay Wilson: Pirates in the Heartland. Dennis Dread will present Entartete Kunts, a collection of contemporary cartoonists and illustrators influenced by the Wilson's work, including Seattle artist Jim Blanchard.

There scarcely was an underground comics world before Robert Crumb's classic solo first issue of Zap in 1968. By Zap #2, he had begun assembling a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. All of them were extremists of one sort or another, from biker-gang member Rodriguez to Christian surfer Griffin, but somehow they produced a decades-long collaboration: a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess, that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap — every cover and every story, and even the Zam mini comic jam among the Zap artists — in a multi-volume, slipcased hardcover set. It will also include the 17th unpublished issue with work by Crumb, Moscoco, Wilson, Rodriguez, Shelton, Mavrides, and Williams. Plus, an introduction by founder R. Crumb and an oral history of Zap by Patrick Rosenkranz, and other exclusive bonus features and items TBA. Zap is the most historically and aesthetically important comics series ever published.

There scarcely was an underground comics world before Robert Crumb's classic solo first issue of Zap in 1968. By Zap #2, he had begun assembling a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. All of them were extremists of one sort or another, from biker-gang member Rodriguez to Christian surfer Griffin, but somehow they produced a decades-long collaboration: a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess, that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap — every cover and every story, and even the Zam mini comic jam among the Zap artists — in a multi-volume, slipcased hardcover set. It will also include the 17th unpublished issue with work by Crumb, Moscoco, Wilson, Rodriguez, Shelton, Mavrides, and Williams. Plus, an introduction by founder R. Crumb and an oral history of Zap by Patrick Rosenkranz, and other exclusive bonus features and items TBA. Zap is the most historically and aesthetically important comics series ever published.

Can't get enough ZAP in your life?! Not only do we have our limited-edition, single printing five-volume box set of The Complete Zap Comix coming out in November, but we're also preparing companion book and Volume 9 of The Comics Journal Library—Zap: The Interviews, edited by Michael Dean and Gary Groth. This softcover collection holds all of the definitive Comics Journal interviews with the various Zap contributors and is a must-have for any Zap addic—er, fan. We've got the journal cover design here, and we'll have select previews coming soon!

And heavy. Loyal ZAP fans, this beast of a box set will surely not disappoint. Our desks are sagging just a little bit under the weight of the very first advance copies, straight from the printer, and we just had to share these sneak peek images with you straightaway!